


Throw Away Your Dancing Shoes

by Hecate



Category: Center Stage
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College is easier than all her mornings, making friends with strangers who don't know who she was, who don't ask about dancing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Throw Away Your Dancing Shoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [methacrylate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/methacrylate/gifts).



It's weeks after she walked away from her mother's dream, and Maureen still throws up her breakfast every morning. Jim hovers in the background, worried. Waiting. When she comes out of the bathroom, she practises her smile and Jim holds her hand. She wonders if he'll leave her.

 

She doesn't tell him that she thought it would be easier. Not life, not college, just this. Having an ordinary morning with waffles and coffee and his easy smile. But it isn't. It's hard in a way dancing never was because now she _cares_. The feeling blindsides her at night, makes her shake with the fear of losing something she doesn't even know yet, and she reaches out for Jim, for her future. For something. And dreams.

 

College is easier than all her mornings, making friends with strangers who don't know who she was, who don't ask about dancing. She's a freshman, undeclared, and it's something to talk about. Discussing the future with others who have no map to guide them, and they're all stumbling and grasping, and she feels at home.

 

Maureen thinks she might choose math because it's logical and clean and everything dancing never was. No one could ever tell her that she should do it once more with feeling; no one would be disappointed. She likes the idea. Jim cocks his head, listens, shrugs. Tells her to find something she loves. She's not sure that she can. But she smiles.

 

Her mother calls Maureen to tell her that Emily dances again, paying her way through college with ballet and a scholarship. She can hear the hope in her mother's voice, knows that she wants Maureen to follow in Emily's steps. But she won't, she _can't_. After her mother ends the call, Maureen laughs. She hopes that Jonathan knows of Emily's second chance. Emily was good enough; it was the academy that failed her.

 

Sometimes Maureen wishes she had seen Eva dance her part at the workshop, seen how her mother's dream looked like when Eva was wearing it. She is sure that it was beautiful, she is sure that Juliette loved it and saw all the emotions in Eva that Maureen never had. Not when it came to ballet.

 

And yet, Maureen misses Juliette's praise, misses being the best. These days, she learns mediocrity and failure; she studies things she doesn't understand. She's not all right. Not yet. She still thinks she will be.

 

At night, Maureen dances. Jim tells her that her feet move when she sleeps, like a cat dreaming of mice, and she shrugs. Muscle memory, a life that wasn't her own. She wants to blame it on her mother. In the supermarket, she steps around the other customers, her feet going first, second, third, fourth, fifth position. She frowns, Jim laughs. She throws an apple at him, watches as it bounces from his chest and falls into their cart. Jim laughs harder.

 

He surprises her with a midnight picnic three months into her freshman year, taking her hand and leading her to the roof of the building they're living in. Candles and stars and burnt waffles, and he smiles as if he created a little miracle. The blanket is too thin, the concrete rooftop beneath it rough and cold. Jim kisses her, his lips tasting of too-sweet syrup. It's perfect. Maureen falls asleep in his arms and misses the sunrise. She doesn't mind.

 

Four months after the workshop, Eva falls and breaks her foot, her career tumbling down with her. It's Jody who tells Maureen about it, Jody who still writes her regularly even when Maureen forgets to answer. They aren't friends, never were, but it's nice to know that Jody remembers her, that the years Maureen spent with dancing and bleeding feet did not vanish into thin air. She left traces. Eva, who got her part. Jody, who remembers her.

 

But Eva's career is over and Jody has the wrong kind of feet and it doesn't matter how much she loves dancing, how much her passion shines through: She'll never be a legend and Cooper's company is as far as she'll ever go. It's Maureen who has the feet, the body, the technique. And she doesn't care at all. But Jody is happy and Maureen is still looking for her own life.

 

She finds her pointe shoes in a bag when she visits her mother and tries them on. She does some steps, stretches into an old familiarity. It's easy for a while. Too easy. She pulls the shoes off, rubs over her toes. Her feet hurt the day after. The next time she comes by, Maureen takes the shoes and the clothes and puts it all in an ugly black plastic bag. For a few seconds, she thinks she should be angry that her past and her mother's dreams fit in there so easily. Like it's nothing. Like it never mattered at all. But Maureen shrugs it off and throws everything away. She doesn't tell her mother. She doesn't tell anyone.

 

Seven months pass and she eats her breakfast and keeps it down. Maybe it shouldn't make her feel so proud, but it does. Jim smiles and she laughs, and it's perfect and true in a way ballet never was.

 

Maureen watches Jody dance on a Thursday, the first show the Cooper Nielsen Company ever staged. She sees all the mistakes Jody makes and she doesn't care. It's beautiful. Jody smiles at her in the dressing room, her make-up smeared all over the face, and Maureen grins.

 

"Are you alright?" Jody asks her.

 

Maureen pauses, her eyes sweeping through the dressing room, over the other dancers, seeing a world that used to be hers. "I'm getting there." It's not a lie. They don't talk about Eva.

 

Eight months and Maureen realizes that her body isn't the company's anymore. Jonathan would raise his eyebrows at her weight; her mother would frown. Maureen laughs and meets Jim for dinner. They go dancing hours later, strobe lights and an unfamiliar beat. Her body moves to it, steps without rhythm and rhyme, and she thinks she might understand Jody's smile on the stage. But this isn't ballet, this isn't a company or the glorious career her mother dreamed of. It's just a club at 2 am, horrible music and too-sweet cocktails. It's a hangover in the making and Jim's smile. It's dancing, once more with feeling and for the first time without rules.

 

The beat goes on and so does life. Her freshman year passes her by and she considers her major again. She doesn't choose. She still has time.


End file.
